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Milligan backs under-fire Osieck

Mark Milligan has backed Holger Osieck to continue as Australia coach and is confident the team will produce an improved performance against France next month.

Mark Milligan has backed Holger Osieck to continue as Australia coach and is confident the team will produce an improved performance against France next month.

The Socceroos suffered a disastrous 6-0 friendly defeat to Brazil earlier this month, prompting calls for Osieck to be axed ahead of the 2014 FIFA World Cup.

However, midfielder Milligan does expect Football Federation Australia to make a change before the tournament in Brazil, which kicks off in June.

"I personally ... Holger's been in for a while now, there's been speculation about this sort of thing before and I think he and the team bounce back extremely well and showed what exactly we can do through the qualifiers," he said.

"I don't think they'll be any rash decisions made over one result. It's very important that the players come together and dig deep in the next two games. There's not a great deal of time until the World Cup rolls about.

"We all need to be playing and we all need to be playing our best football from now on. That's very important for us, that we have the confidence in each other and our ability. We're very lucky that we have the chance to turn it all around."

Australia's next friendly is a challenging encounter away to France on October 11, followed by a clash with Canada in London four days later.

"We're lucky we're in a good situation at the moment, having some quality games coming up rather quickly where we get a chance to redeem ourselves," Milligan said.

"In the past, or since I've been in the team, I know when we've gone through some tough times or a few tough results we do tend to bounce back quickly and bounce back well, so that's the challenge that the players put to each other and that's the challenge we have ahead of ourselves now in a couple of weeks' time when we face France."

Milligan acknowledged the Socceroos' efforts in Brasilia were hugely disappointing, describing their showing in the heavy loss as 'un-Australian'.

"I think no matter what team you're in, there was no hiding from the fact we did get a little bit of a touch up over there," he said.

"I think the biggest thing for us as a team was we felt it was un-Australian of us, in the performance that we put in across the board. So obviously we're very tough on ourselves as well. So we were extremely disappointed in not just the score-line but the overall performance we put in."